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Comcast demos 1.08Gbps Internet; downloads 23-episode TV series in 99 seconds

Thursday, June 16, 2011 · 1:33 pm · 39 Comments

“Comcast chief Brian Roberts during his turn on stage at the Cable Show on Thursday showed an example of the practical possibilities of cable modem Internet access in the future,” Electronista reports.

“Using a 1.08Gbps testbed, the executive successfully downloaded a 23-episode season of 30 Rock in about 99 seconds,” Electronista reports. “The best current cable Internet access in the US tops out at about 100Mbps.”

Electronista reports, “Also at the show floor was a 100Mbps symmetrical connection that used channel bonding to get historically slow upload speeds to match those for the downloads. At these speeds, a 2GB file transfers in less than three minutes regardless of the direction.”

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Comment Feed

39 Comments

Blodwyn

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 1:42 pm · Reply

So now you can exceed your bandwidth cap in a few minutes. Comcast sucks for imposing caps and doing their best to fight against net neutrality.
FTB

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 1:43 pm · Reply

Comcast also debuts the new 10gb/month limit on bandwidth.
And new pricing at $100 for first 10gb, and $50 for each gb after that.
Aaron F

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 1:43 pm · Reply

1Gb internet with a download cap of 250GB. Meaningless..
- Chris Barczys
  
  Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:50 pm · Reply
  
  Seriously? You actually transfer MORE than 250GB of data a month? That’s a quarter of a Terabyte per month! Or to put it another way, 5 completely full Blu-ray disks. What are you doing? I have trouble imagining a scenario where by an average person could max out a 250GB cap. The average person watches 19 hour of TV a week. If you tossed out your cable & replaced it with Netflix, & you watched only movies streamed at the maximum bit-rate that Netflix provides, you’d be able to watch 8 weeks worth of movies before you’d hit the MONTHLY cap. I just don’t see how the majority of users would exceed a 250GB limit. I believe that most customers would be happy to get the type of service that you seem to feel is inadequate.
  - Backups
    
    Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:25 pm · Reply
    
    Umm, I can think of at least one situation… data backups.
    
    Anyone in the creative industry shooting photos or videos could easily bump up against this.
    
    I don’t see file sizes becoming any smaller…
    - macromancer
      
      Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 4:27 pm · Reply
      
      Another reason why I think it’s money in the bank that Apple launches its own network within a few years.
  - Mike
    
    Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:39 pm · Reply
    
    @ Chris — yes, seriously. welcome to the “cloud”. Current data transfers by design will go up dramatically if everyone embraces terminal computing. Consumers will hit the caps and they will be whining.
    
    Many ISPs that have proven to be unprepared for the video download services that are already in operation. They are just now trying to figure out what might be necessary to deliver the data accessibility advertised by raincloud marketers … that is, if you are lucky enough to have a responsive ISP. Most of the USA is not so lucky.
    
    And yes, there are many families that watch more than 5 blu-ray films per month — at a quality that no download service matches because the pipes can’t reliably deliver streaming 1080p video.
    - Cubert
      
      Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 8:59 pm · Reply
      
      Hence delta backups a la Time Machine and iCloud.
      - D-Bog
        
        Friday, June 17, 2011 - 2:58 am · Reply
        
        I average about 5TB a month. Hence why I have business class. Between all the video on the net and the fact I have no TV it’s where all my media comes from. So yes 1Gbs internet with 250GB cap…. kinda stupid.. because 250GB is way not enough. Especially if you have a family. iCloud will only make this worse. So they need to stop being afraid of Bittorrent and raise the caps.. Or it’s gonna suck big time.
  - qka
    
    Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:56 pm · Reply
    
    Another situation: a household of multiple computer users. Mom, Dad, and the kids: individually average users, together Heavy User.
  - Yes, Seriously
    
    Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 5:18 pm · Reply
    
    Here are my broadband usages the past 3 months
    
    March 170GB
    April 183GB
    May 265GB
    June (so far) 86GB
    
    This is on comcast. I have no cable, just nextflix. I watch HD youtube videos and play Xbox Live. These are the usages of me and my wife in our apartment. We are in our early 20s. In this age of HD content 250GB is not huge.
    
    You are being a little…weird in your vehement defense of a cable company.
    - G4Dualie
      
      Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 6:16 pm · Reply
      
      Hey Dude, wake up! You’re wife is lonely and you’re a loser who spends way too much time on videos and games.
      
      I’m not heartened by the fact that twenty-somethings like you are so enamored by YouTube and games.
      
      Get a life!
      - Shinolashow
        
        Friday, June 17, 2011 - 1:26 am · Reply
        
        Aside from the irony of you posting on an online forum chastising a persons normal web activities, you are no doubt an all around jackass.
        
        It’s fun you can’t see it and we all can. Lulz!!!!!
        
        Haha
        
        Friday, June 17, 2011 - 11:57 am ·
        
        This
        
        Think Mr. G4 is a little sexually frustrated?
omalansky

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 1:51 pm · Reply

Comcast has been delivering too little and charging too much for the entire time they’ve been in business. A showdown is coming, and it won’t be pretty.
ploogman

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:15 pm · Reply

Comcast smoke and mirrors… again.

Sorry but cable delivery systems will not be able to match pure end to end fiber points, a la Verizon FIOS. Simple. Period.

BTW, why is this Apple news? Apple=Comcast or something?
- derss
  
  Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:08 pm · Reply
  
  Apple soon might wait actually buy Comcast for like $80 billion in “cash” to make the road for Apple TV.
  
  Lets say this is one of countless rumour where Apple can spend its money.
  - G4Dualie
    
    Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 6:17 pm · Reply
    
    Yeah, right. And then you woke up.
- Cubert
  
  Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 9:01 pm · Reply
  
  Every person I know that has switched to FIOS (disclaimer: in Philadelphia) has switched back to Comcast cable. They’ve all said the same bad things about it – only about half as fast downloads and poor picture quality.
TheMacAdvocate

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:19 pm · Reply

I’m introducing a car that goes 0-60 in 2.9 seconds and gets 68 MPG, but the engine blows up once the odometer hits 52 miles.

/flips bird
kingmel

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:20 pm · Reply

Makes my 6Mbps (actually around 5.2Mbps) ADSL service look pitiful in comparison.

When can I get real bandwidth for a reasonable price? I only have a couple of options – Comcast and AT&T U-verse. I would prefer to have another option…
- Metryq
  
  Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:50 pm · Reply
  
  What’s that in “episodes”? This must be some new unit of measure.
MEES

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:27 pm · Reply

I don’t understand these “data caps” at all. Most companies use these caps, even “unlimited” services get throttled back if you reach 5Gb in a month.

The problem is that it isn’t costing the companies much to deliver more data through the same channels. The “wire” doesn’t care if it just delivered 1Mb or 10 terabytes.

I think it is more of a money making scheme these companies use much like the actual cost of text messaging compared to what people pay for this service. Text messaging was practically free until the wireless companies got wise and marked the text up messaging service 1000%

However, as consumers, we tend to allow politics and corporations to dictate unfair charges because we are afraid of “government” intervention that could control stabilize what these companies get away with. We shouldn’t get so worked up about taxes when the corporations are doing a fantastic job at ripping us off.

Regardless, it is good to see that there is some really fast internet service potentially available.
- Eric The Red
  
  Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:35 pm · Reply
  
  There’s a difference between available and usable…
  
  250 GB is getting smaller everyday…
- Muad'dib
  
  Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:42 pm · Reply
  
  I guess you don’t know electricity very well.
  The wire does care how much goes through it. Try taking a standard 15 amp/120V wire and put 50 amps/220V through it and watch how little time it takes to catch fire.
  With so many people using the internet, wires get hot, as does any hardware. The companies need to continuously update their hardware and systems. hence charges. They are too high though
  - Blodwyn
    
    Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:26 pm · Reply
    
    Are you for real? You do know there’s a difference between analog and digital traffic? Most of the internet traffic is through fiber anyway, except for the last few hundred yards into your house.
    - Mike
      
      Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:45 pm · Reply
      
      @ Blodwyn -
      
      While Muad’dib’s wire power analogy has little bearing on modern digital signal transfer, his punch line is correct. Current data backbones don’t have the switching or cooling capacity to handle what is being marketed. That’s the whole reason for the caps now. ISPs have decided it is more profitable to install enough capacity to handle median demand, not peak loads. It would be easier to support their position if they were using their profits to build more capability, but they don’t seem to be straining themselves to do so.
      - disposableidentity
        
        Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 7:24 pm · Reply
        
        Muad’dib is quite correct. In the winter my wife and I FTP whole seasons of our favourite television shows back and forth from the living room to the den to warm the house and keep our gas bill lower : )
RDF

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 2:58 pm · Reply

Fancy that,
Now go fix my effing xFinity that has not worked properly since the digital “upgrade”. Your fancy Cisco box handles HDTV poorly compared to the EyeTV 500 I was able to use before you put everything behind scrambling. Video dropouts, skipping audio, slower Internet, intermittent landline Phone…
They sent a guy out Sunday who said he had never seen it before and their shitty 35 year old cable lines and junction box were not the problem. Clueless obviously knows nothing about packet loss on digital networks. The signal is so degraded that the Cisco box cannot keep up.
- zakspop
  
  Friday, June 17, 2011 - 10:31 pm · Reply
  
  As for all of you who don’t like comcast, I got an idea for you…
  Call them up tomorrow and cancel them. No one is holding a gun to your face. This article was about a 1.08 GB internet connection, not a “how bad Comcast is” post. Shit AT&T, TimeWarner, Cox, etc.. are all just the same.
trondude

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:45 pm · Reply

Comcast unlimited 1Gbps service

$750.00 a month

Unthrottled $999.99 a month

The future…….
- jltnol
  
  Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 4:13 pm · Reply
  
  And you’ve got to sign a 5 year contract to get that price as well!
nciceman

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 3:55 pm · Reply

Being a U-verse customer, all my tv and data comes over the same pipe as data. I am going to start monitoring my router’s throughput, to see exactly how much data is coming to me a month. Last I checked it was about 50-62GB/month. But I work very little cloud-based (I also still buy physical media – I am old fashioned) and do not use cloud-based backups, so I many not be a good example for this.
wymer100

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 5:13 pm · Reply

Doesn’t much matter as well never get that in our area. We have Comcast now, but I highly doubt they’ll even build out the capacity to come close. We basically only have comcast in our area for anything broadband. I love having comcast as the monopoly around here. (rolleyes)
Derek Currie

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 5:51 pm · Reply

I want to pay TWICE for my video downloads!

1) Pay NetFlix, iTunes Store, etc. for video data
-&-
2) Pay Comcast over-the-limit fees!!!

YEAH!!! That’s technological progress.
Bandit Bill

Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 8:33 pm · Reply

Funny a week ago, people could barely manage a 4GB Lion download. This week they are complaining about exceeding 250GB data caps.
zakspop

Friday, June 17, 2011 - 10:21 pm · Reply

This pisses me off. All you guys bitching about a 250gb cap. Piss off. Personally I think that Netflix etc. should have to give a percentage of their revenue to the ISPs. Maybe then the ISP’s wouldn’t cap you but all they get is bandwidth hogs who think they are owed something. Butch of little whiny bitches.
- ttringle
  
  Saturday, July 9, 2011 - 3:11 pm · Reply
  
  Hey Zak,
  
  How about you shut your mouth. Netflix shouldn’t have to pay the cable companies extra because they are POPULAR. How about you pay extra for that gas because your driving to a popular destination huh? How about your work has to pay extra money every year for road maintenance because they have alot of workers. Oh yeah, they do, it’s called taxes which we all pay. We also ALREADY F’ING pay for our Comcast. Comcast has no right in the world to charge extra because Netflix is popular. That means the customers they already get paid by are using their internet access for what they want.
  
  Just because they don’t like how the internet is being used, not to mention the fact that they are in direct competition to Netflix doesn’t give them the right to try and gouge their customers or other business providers.
  
  How would you like it if all of a sudden there were 30 new tolls at the front gate of every shopping mall and shopping center you visit. Yes sometimes you have to pay for parking, but that is usually not the case and it’s an option most of the time.
  
  Why don’t you think before you open your apparently ill informed mouth. The internet is no different from the real world and if you give these companies an inch they will rape you for all you are worth. Let them charge extra for things they shouldn’t have the right to and you’ll be paying for the rest of your life.
  
  SO take you dumb ass ideas about what we deserve as consumers and shovem where the sun don’t shine. I already pay Comcast quite enough money for my internet connection. I use the bandwidth I HAVE paid for, that is my right as a consumer. Just because you don’t use your all of your bandwidth does not give you the right to call other people HOGS.
  
  Let me remind you that these companies added caps after the fact. When they thought that they were making money off you (which they still are, don’t let them fool you) they had no problem claiming it was “UNLIMITED”, now that people are actually using their services (AS INTENDED!!!!) all of a sudden it’s us HOGS that are the problem and not their network.
  
  You know what pisses me off, idiots like you who think they have the right to tell other people how they should live their lives or volunteer other people to pay extra money when you have no idea what the consequences will be to everybody else.
  
  Jerkoff.
Maksim

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - 4:33 am · Reply

People people people! I can say much more, ok:
1. Why are you looking for people who is using less than 250GB, maybe they’re old, have much work and their time for internet is less. So, even if Comcast is saying that much people are using 50GB per month, = ok, lets other people use the rest of it or you understand me, yeh?
2. Oh, very funny, till 2008 their was a future, now is back time count! Oh, my god, and you’re saying that this is not the end of the world? 2011, 2012, so f*cking tech years already, and 25GB for one HD (1080p) movie for one time is already much, and I m not saying about other movies, youtube, and so on. I’m using above 500GB, and other two people in my family is using above 500GB, too because look, I sit most of the time watching videos, paying for download music and HD movies. My uncle is watching videos, too. My mom is paying for Russian TV, and watching over 50 movies a month in 480p (ok its about 700MB for 90 minutes of movies) and it is 700MB times 50 = 35000 and over (35GB and over just for internet TV). Ok, me between 500GB and 700GB , my uncle like about 300GB and my mom with about 100GB and it is already 900GB-1.2TB a month man, and I can’t imagine to watch movies in 1080p all the time, because they have 25GB and more! 10 movies for a month and that it. F*ck you dicks f*ckers. Continue to make more internet speed and file sizes, I will be very happy to see 100GBPs internet with 250GB cap! It will be so f*cked up! With thousands buck a month just for cap!